New Unitiqute 2 dropping internet radio

Do you have a NAS connected as well Steve? A Gb switch may be what you need.

The NAS and UQ2 connect to the switch and then the switch to the hub. This should sort out the traffic. I have a TP link one (sub £20).

Regards

Neil

Is the hub a switch?

Hi sorry, not sure what the difference is. They (NAS and UQ20) are plugged into the Netgear switch/hub, which is a GB 8 port variety.

Could the Netgear hub work without the Extreme? Is it a modem/router? Does it do wireless as well? In other words is the Extreme redundant really?

Where is Simon when you need him!

I used to have an Extreme but this was no longer required when I got my Virgin SuperHub. I had the same problems as you say and after a bit of reading on the forum I purchased a switch and all was right with the world again. 

Neil

Streaming works flawlessly so I think it is more internet then network related.

Wait for a response from the 'network gurus'.

Neil

On my ND5 XS, Radio Paradise also keeps dropping out today. All other Internet radio stations are just fine.

On my NS03, Radio Paradise streams dropless. But the path from my Naim music server to the internet is all cabled. My Airport Extreme is only used to add my mobile devices to my wired LAN.

What is the exact path from your U2Q to the internet? Is it all cabled from U2Q over the Netgear switch to the internet modem.

Or is your Airport Extreme involved in all your Internet access? WLAN is generally slower and less steady in throughput than a cable!

Its only Radio Paradise and Naim that seems to drop. All others are ok, as is all my streaming from my NAS drives. Its all cables with CAT6, via the netgear hub/switch, to the Airport Extreme, and then to the Virgin Modem.

Is the Extreme wired to the Virgin Modem? Does the Virgin modem have wireless capabilities? 

Steve I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish with the Airport Extreme.  Depending on what you are trying to do, you need to set it up (and your Virgin device) with certain services on, or off.  You may be unknowingly running two DHCP servers (one on each of those), two NATs, two wi fi services, etc.  Or you could know entirely what you're doing and tell me to shut up

I'm clearly a little groggy from Xmas and not being particularly articulate today Bart. Thank you. 

So the airport is the home router, with an express also in the conservatory. It gives great wireless coverage with one wifi all over the house. The Virgin is modem only with ethernet out. It goes to the Apple Extreme directly as the WAN input. The NAS, the UQ2 and home cinema gear in my living room all go into the Netgear switch, and this goes into the Apple Extreme. I don't have network or internet access issues with anything else.

In short its not you, its them.

It does sound like it's them, not you.  Do you have the Extreme in "bridge" mode?  Or DHCP set to "off" on the Virgin device?  I ask because when I first added the Extreme, it and my home modem both were providing IP addresses.  It didn't seem to slow anything down, but it's a lot of processing for no useful purpose. 

Steve, ok, well I think you have confirmed you are using a Netgear switch and not a hub.. this is important and good. (Network hubs are quite rare now  but are not ideal for streaming as they only support half duplex wired connections where traffic can collide with each other).

However, I think you are saying you connect your switch to a wireless access point (Apple) and then wirelessly to your broadband router?

if so I would not recommend this, for several technical reasons, especially for web radio links with small / low latency buffers which Naim seem to use. If you have to do this get a matching Apple access router and try and run it 802.11ac .. Which the newest Apple extreme and time capsule devices support. This should operate upto 1gbps   (Half duplex ) on 5Ghz, which should mitigate some of your issues of using a half duplex wifi link. if your link is 802.11n you may be lucky with a strong signal, but if your link is 802.11g you are more likely asking for trouble with streaming external traffic.

But my recommendation is to use a wired duplex link between the Apple Extreme and switch.. Even if means you need to use flat under carpet ribbon Ethernet cable. I use the stuff here and it works a treat.

Simon

No, the Virgin Media is a modem ONLY, not a router. It has to be used with a router. Hence the  Apple Extreme,  without this no network. I can stream 24/192 off the NAS and it never misses a bit. Nor does wired streaming of hi def movies in the lounge on AppleTV. It's just these internet radio stations.

If it really is just these two stations, and you can listen to others without problem (try R3 at 320k for a while to make sure it's not a bit rate issue?) then surely it's nothing to do with your local set-up and has something to do with Naim's supply of Internet radio channels. Which has been an occasional problem before. FWIW, I also run a high speed Virgin connection, also use their hub as modem only, and also use an Airport Extreme. With no problems.

Actually, I can't get iRadio to work at all at the moment. I suspect another problem with Naim's American partners. Are others connecting ok!

Update:- all working now. Needed a reboot of the SU. Once or twice, I've found this necessary to get iRadio back even when everything else network based is working fine.

Steve, either way - as per my suggestion I recommend you to remove the lower latency links in your home network for some TCP streamed web stations, especially if your client has a smallish buffer (app buffer and TCP) as with Naim devices. Therefore I recommend removing your wireless connection in your path - unless you can use a very high speed wireless connection like the the very new 802.11ac - which will mitigate the effects of the wifi latency to some extent.

Remember with TCP/IP the behaviour is down to many network parameters in the communicating clients and routers in the network path. The TCP window sizes and latency can have a big impact to application behaviour. Your local streamed media to a client could behave quite differently from distantly streamed media because of the different end to end network characteristics, which I think you are saying is exactly happening to you. A wired link won't guarantee to completely remove these issues, but it reduces the likelihood of your home network  contributing to the matter

Simon

Thanks Simon, the wireless is 802.11ac, with the new Apple Extreme, but the UQ2 is hardwired to the switch, through to the router, and then to the modem. All in same room no more than 8 feet apart. I can't remove the wireless in the house, the kids would linch me.

Steve - ok reading your posts again - am I right that there is no wireless link between your UQ2 and the Virgin NTE (Network Terminating Equipment modem)

Ie UQ2->NetgearSwitch->AirportExtreme->VirginNTE

where -> is a wired ethernet link

So if this is so and you have no faulty ethernet patch leads - you should be at full duplex, low latency and at full network speed. 

Can you confirm this is so?

Does the web radio stream stop then come back on a repeating cycle? Are there any stations it doesn't happen to?

Unfortunately - if you are using a wired connection - and some stations - such as the higher bandwidth stations are choppy in a repeating cycle - the only thing I can think of is that points to  bad traffic shaping or worse still no traffic shaping by your ISP (Virgin)  and it is flooding your link or access and then backing off and because Naim uses quite small buffers this becomes noticable.

I have no idea how to confirm this without looking at a Wireshark trace - or if confirmed how you would ask Virgin to fix it.. 

One thought can you hammer your link when you are all also listening to the web radio stream - does it improve?

Simon